Running has made Allison Walsh unrecognizable to her inner child

When I asked Allison Walsh what kind of athlete she was in high school, she made a sound I could not identify.

Let’s just say that despite being a runner now, at 36, a runner so adept that she’ll be running a half marathon in her 50th state Sunday at the Prairie Fire Marathon in Wichita, Walsh does not and never has identify herself as an athlete.

“There were never any sports for me,” said Walsh, a nursing instructor at Penn State who lives in Erie, Pa. “I was embarrassingly bad in sports. I love to read, still, and I’ve been into creative writing.”

Walsh had such an aversion to running in elementary school, she said, that she devised a way to get out of running as many laps as the other kids.

So how does someone like that become hooked on running?

“Well, it took a while,” Walsh said.

As a former cancer nurse, Walsh often told her patients how they could benefit from losing weight. But she felt the message wasn’t as legitimate as it could be because she was overweight.

“I got to 225 pounds probably in 2008,” Walsh said. “I’ve fluctuated all over the place because I love food and I still do. I’m still kind of up and down, but it’s lot better now. I’m a lot healthier.”

Walsh ran her first half marathon in the same year her weight got out of control, but didn’t get serious about running until 2009.

“I was always quite sendintary and one of my friends was involved with Team in Training,” Walsh said. “They help train you for a marathon or half marathon and you raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Being that we were both cancer nurses, it was a good fit. She asked if I wanted to run a half-marathon with her and I said. ‘Oh yeah, that sounds like fun.’ ”

Fun?

Maybe later, but not the first time.

“It was the Cincinnati Flying Pig half marathon and it was just terrible,” Walsh said. “I was not at all properly trained for that and around mile 9 I wanted to quit, but I didn’t know how. I’m in the middle of Cincinnati, not sure where I’m at, and there’s nothing for me to do but continue.”

She walked mostly, trotted some and ran little. It took her 3 hours, 40 minutes to finish. But she finished.

“When I crossed the finish line, I got this rush of, ‘Wow, I really pushed myself to do something I never thought I would do, could do,’” Walsh said. “So in 2009 I started running again, getting more serious and training for real. I signed up for a lot of races and it went a lot better and I was hooked.”

That doesn’t mean Walsh fell in love for running, though. That took longer.

“Early on, the training was something I felt like I had to do, not wanted to do,” she said. “For a long time, I did not love the running part but I did love getting the medals. In the last few years, though, the running has become something I really look forward to. It’s a stress reliever for me to help clear my mind.”

Walsh has run six marathons, but none since 2013. She is most comfortable doing 13 miles and has done an average of seven per year since 2009, including 13 in 2015.

“I think the half marathon is perfect for me,” Walsh said. “For marathon runners, it’s almost a full-time job to get to where they need to be. The half marathon is still a respectable distance but it’s manageable and, for me, a lot easier to maintain the training for.”

It wasn’t by design that Kansas, and the Prairie Fire, is Walsh’s 50th half marathon. She’s had this particular race in her mind for a while now, she said.

“It’s just kind of worked out this way, to where this is my 50th state,” Walsh said. “Some people plan it out very carefully but I just ran whatever state was available based on where I could get to the easiest. Kansas ended up being pretty random but in my 50 States Half Marathon Club we talked about how cool it was that Kansas, in the center of the nation, is the last state to get colored in for me.”

Walsh said the 18-year-old version of herself would not recognize who she has become.

“I’ve always been a goal-oriented person,” she said. “If I’m not working toward something… ugh. It helps me to be in the 50 States club because I see so many people doing this with so many levels of athletic ability.

“It I could go back and tell 18-year-old Allison that she was going to run a half-marathon in every state and that it would be something she wanted to do, she’d think I was crazy.”

This story was originally published October 6, 2016 at 4:48 PM with the headline "Running has made Allison Walsh unrecognizable to her inner child."